Loli Ban Opponents “Mentally Ill”

The supporters of a ban on loli manga are attempting to brand opponents as mentally ill, whilst denying that any evidence is required for their proposed bans and suggesting it is ridiculous that fictional children do not enjoy the same rights as real ones.

One author, Nanako Ooba, a “birth coordinator,” writes thus:

“Whenever anyone tries to ban this material, the mangaka and their supporters send them huge amounts of protest mail; however you look at it, this is violence. Against such violence there is no need to discuss the basis of the law.”

“Isn’t it necessary to spread the idea that the people supporting the readers of these sexual abuse manga are causing denial?”

“Please refer to the following: ‘On the Denial of Schizophrenia’.”

“They are suffering from denial, they keep arguing that you can’t ban something with no evidence against it. We have to think of a counter to this.”

It seems unlikely she would be prepared to consider the letter-spamming campaigns of Equality Now as “violence.”

A convention of Parent-Teacher Associations publically foams at the mouth when the subject of loli manga is mentioned:

“As a society, as parents, we can’t forgive this. Indeed, it is madness that these disgusting forms of extreme sexual expression are allowed at all.

Why are these things even allowed to be published? We have to change Japan’s culture and values, and tie these manga to the promotion of sex crime.”

“This isn’t a matter of just not letting minors read them, or of there being no victims in a manga. There are lots of adults who commit crimes based on these. Without a shadow of a doubt, anime and rorikon culture cause sex crime. If they can’t be relied on to regulate themselves, there must be a ban.”

“For the sake of the publishing industry, we should be gradually imposing more and more penalties on them to weed out the bad ones.”

“It is absolutely incomprehensible that they are allowed to do this to children just because they don’t exist.”

“In other countries they have bans. Only in Japan can we not get a ban. A ban is so obviously right that there is no need at all to provide an explanation or data to the mangaka groups.”

Ban supporters talk with delight of a formidable weapon in their arsenal, the washed up former idol and Sokka Gakkai cultist Agnes Chan:

“There was a Diet member who objected to the ban because it would ban some famous nude artwork. Agnes Chan did him right! ‘Do you really want to see pictures of 15-year-old girls that much? What’s artistic about that? Why can’t you wait until they’re 18?’ she said. He was lost for words.”

A prominent legal scholar argues fictional beings deserve the same rights as actual ones:

“It is simply bizarre that any kind of manga can be published simply because no actual people appear in it.

On the subject of a ban, I heard that a Diet member received a huge amount of threatening mail just for proposing it. For that reason, something must be done about this.”

Yet he freely admits there is no evidence whatsoever that such material increases crime:

“But there is no evidence that child porn manga increases child rape. Of course, there is no evidence that the manga exerts a cathartic effect and reduces crime either.

… but I think it is wrong to think that just because there is no data supporting a link that manga does not influence sex crime. It is nonsense to suggest you need evidence to support a ban.”

Opponents of such measures would do well to note the pointlessness of attempting to reason with either the proponents of a ban or the general public.

Just as they suggest, tactics of demonising, smearing and discrediting opponents, and making appeals to the paranoid emotions of the general public, whether relating to their children or their human rights, are more likely to be effective, to say nothing of the effectiveness of direct pressure.